I hear voices...

My cell phone has an echo when I call the WCM so I hear my voice coming back at me on a 2-second delay. My voice sounds nasal, mezzo soprano, and uptempo with clipped consonants. I don't have a discernable Delaware accent, as the speech training my father put me through as a child was brutally effective. Enunciate! Round your vowels! Modulate your tone!

My mother-in-law has a voice that makes dogs cringe - it's so squeakily high it hurts. It was one of the things that most irritated me about her, especially since most of the time it was raised in a whine. Miss Peanut also has a high, squeaky voice, but then, she's four years old. She has a slight speech impediment due to knocking out her two front teeth two years ago. She'll grow out of it when she gets her permanent teeth - in about 4 years... The WCM has a tenor voice, and an odd tendency to say "warsh" instead of "wash." I've never understood this idiosyncracy, but it's not a major fault.

None of the voices I hear in my head when I read books or blogs say "warsh" though. Nor are they squeaky or high. In my head, I hear beguiling baritones and mellow altos. I hear the sophisticated screen voices of 1940s silver screen stars. I hear the husky timbre of the pack-a-day smoker wreathed in fragrant fumes. And I hear accents of all nationalities and locales - Northern England, Southern France, Ancient Rome, Scottish Highlands, South Jersey, Saint Louis, and New Yawk.

It's funny how a voice can influence how you think about a person - how it can draw or repel you. Strange, also, how people will change their voices to suit a situation. When I was working in an office, I reverted back to my childhood training and deepened my voice, enunciating like Martha Stewart. My friends would call and ask to speak to me, because they didn't recognize my voice on the phone.

The voice is a powerful instrument. How you sound can make as big an impact on how others perceive you as what you say. If Sylvester Stallone sounded like Stephen Fry, or if Stephen Fry sounded like Ali G, would they have made the same impact on the public?

I don't know really what I'm trying to say here, so I'll just rest my voice and shut the hell up.

G'nite.